


Keep the Flame Alive

by Ziel



Category: Dark Souls (Video Games), Dark Souls I
Genre: Bonfires, Canon Compliant, Canon Disabled Character, Canon-Typical Violence, Coping, F/F, Fictional Religion & Theology, Firekeepers, Lady Knights, Muteness, Physical Disability, Sign Language, Undead, Useless Lesbians, Worldbuilding
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-03-03
Updated: 2018-03-24
Packaged: 2019-03-26 08:46:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 10,973
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13854210
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ziel/pseuds/Ziel
Summary: Anastacia of Astora tends her bonfire. Visitors come and go, fleeting as the flame. It is a lonely duty, but so it is, and so shall it be until the First Flame renews and finally burns her to ash.And just because an undead visited her is no reason to stop. Even if the undead keeps visiting. And bringing gifts. And being a rather dashing female knight.Oh dear.





	1. Chapter 1

The flame is.

Anastacia of Astora has stared into the depths of the fire long enough to etch the flickering, rising and falling pattern into the backs of her eyes.

When it grows too high, she takes branches away. When it withers, she feeds brush into it. Where this brush comes from, that she does not move from her spot at fireside to gather it, does not matter.

The flame is.

She feeds it, quells it, time falling away around her. The ash has long since painted her skin and dress and hair gray, and she wonders sometimes if even her breath will turn ashy, puffing little clouds like it does in the winter. The smell of old char and woodsmoke stains her, follows her stumbling, limping steps.

Those steps are few. She is alone much of the time, and is thus safe. When others come, never men and women, but undead, all of them, she lurches back down to her cell, slipping through cracks in the mountainside that only she knows.

The bonfire is still close here. Directly overhead, sword thrusting down into the earth like to pierce the top of her skull.

Her cell is dark and quiet and cold, like dying after being so near the flame for so long. Though she will not die. The humanity that roils beneath her skin, the infinite life that comes from being one with the flame. She could no more go out than the ocean could go dry.

XXX

Time passes.

The flame is.

She is.

She kindles and smothers, nursing the flame to a steady burn.

And one day, an undead comes to visit her.

This is not unusual. There have been others. Even an uncommon event will become common in an unending stretch of time. She has nothing to offer them. No advice. No tools or trinkets to aid their journey. If they want those, there are merchants, or she has heard there are, lurking above the shrine in the burg.

This one is hollow, its flesh the same sickly, rotten pink as all its fellows. But this one knows it. It sees her look, and the gnarled scrap of a hand vanishes into the folds of a sleeve. The rest of the hollow is similarly shrouded, garbed in loose, concealing robes and hood.

The act is enough for Anastacia to look again. Hollows are as many as birds in the sky, though she can’t recall the last time one was self-aware enough to know shame. Most, when they reached the point of desiccation, were already lost to sense.

“H-hello.” The word is rasped, the tongue speaking it long unused. A woman’s. “I am Ragnhild.”

Anastacia nods back. And then, forestalling any chance of confusion, points to her throat and crosses her hands in an ‘X.’

Ragnhild’s cowled head tilts for a moment, and then she steps forward, nearly pressing against the bars. “You do not speak?”

Anastacia shakes her head. This is the point where every other conversation has trailed off or gone silent, but from the set of her shoulders, the thoughtful tap of a finger against the opposite elbow, Ragnhild seems more intrigued than anything.

“Are you trapped in there? The man above- the surly one, you know him? He said you tend the bonfire.”

Nod.

“Yes as to mean you are trapped, or yes to mean you tend the fire?”

She can’t stop the sigh that escapes her. Her solitude has been all-encompassing for so, so long, and this interloper can’t seem to take a hint.

Anastacia holds up two fingers.

“So you tend the fire.” Ragnhild nods, sounding very satisfied with this answer. Her voice has smoothed slightly, gaining momentum the more she talks. “Perhaps you can aid me then? My journey here was… not entirely voluntary, and I find myself adrift. There are… bells, I’ve been told. I believe I’m to ring them. I’d have asked the man above, but he is poor company.”

Anastacia finds herself rigid against the wall of her cell, suddenly staring indecorously at the woman.

A Chosen Undead. It has been so _long_ since the last.  There are always undead, and some seek the cure, but so few walk the proper stations. 

She rises, limps over to the bars. Her breath hisses between her teeth, quick little puffs in her excitement.

Ragnhild stays silent as Anastacia points.

Once, downward, to the stairs leading below. Blighttown is far, far from her shrine, but she knows there is a bell there. And then again, to the church on the mount, high, high above.

She only stops her efforts when Ragnhild is able to adequately confirm that she understands the directions.

When the Chosen Undead finally walks away to begin her journey- begin _the_ journey, Anastacia bows. 

When Ragnhild turns back, she is still bowing.

“Vestal.” Anastacia rises. “Would it be a burden were I to visit you, now and again? This region is very strange, and my sense of direction has always been lacking.”

Anastacia finds herself nodding.

XXX

She does not see Ragnhild again for several days. The span of time is normally insignificant, the length of a few burnings and kindlings, the fire bright in dusk, but still just the sky changing shades as it always has.

But the disruption in her routine, her monotony, brings a mindfulness she doesn’t enjoy. A sudden flicker of wonder, where the woman would be now. She hadn’t made it to the bell yet- there has been no rolling peel to signal the world that change had come. No indicator that this was truly the undead of legend.

Anastacia burns her fingers three times the first day, and worries a hole in her dress with absent picking on the fourth. The crackle and pop of wood burning, the gentle rush of flame in air, do not ease her cares as they once did. She is distracted.

When someone finally draws near, they come with a clatter, the sound of metal armor rattling. Anastacia flees back to her cell, heart throbbing. The guest had caught her day-dreaming, the sound of boot on stone nearly upon her before she withdrew from her reverie.

The steps rattle and clank across the pavilion, and Anastacia sighs with relief as they stop above.

There is a rush of warmth, the flow beneath her skin surging, some slipping away as the visitor fills their flasks with ambrosia. A pause, the undead resting a moment before beginning to feed souls into the flame. Most of the souls come back to her and rejoin the first flame. Some stay with the undead, an aggregate, the soul greater than the sum of its parts. It is a process of tempering. The undead’s soul strengthened and tuned, a fire fed on the lives of others.

A cycle without end. Souls never truly created or destroyed; just reshaped or divided or fused. Anything she lost would be regained in time.

There is silence and stillness after that. She has just enough awareness of the area around the bonfire to know that the visitor is lingering, likely resting or just enjoying the fire.

And then the steps begin again.

Coming down the staircase toward her. Anastacia stiffens, head cocked to listen. The steps are confident, moving steadily down the path.

Another visitor so soon? Or perhaps the woman- Ragnhild had brought trouble in her wake?

Clank. Clank. Clunk. Like a pocket full of coins, jingling away.

A silhouette fills the barred window of her cell.

“Vestal.”

A familiar, rough-coated voice. The garb is different now. A chainmail hauberk and hood over leather trousers. Worn boots, too big for her, with what look to be rags stuffed inside to keep them tight. A small, dented buckler, and a sword, long and thin, a duelist’s rapier.

Anastacia’s gaze rises, unbidden. A tiny gasp escapes her.

A hooked, aristocratic nose cuts down the center of a face sharp enough to crack stone. Angled cheek-bones and pointed chin. A few strands of blonde hair escaping from beneath the chain hood. Ash-gray eyes.

The first human face she has seen in a long while.

Ragnhild sees her looking, and a flush appears in her cheeks, revealing freckles dappled all across them. “I- twas unseemly to appear before you as a hollow.”

She shifts, boots scuffing, face turned away.

Anastacia crawls forward. Not close enough to reach, but near enough that were they able, they could converse comfortably. She taps on the bars to catch Ragnhild’s attention, but the other woman has already turned back to her.

“I’m not troubling you?”

A vehement head-shake. She’s finding herself frustrated for the first time in a very long time that she hadn’t had a chance to learn hand signs before her silencing. That there could be grounds for misunderstanding here, that the woman might confuse her surprise for rudeness. These things are unforgivable.

After another moment of hemming, Ragnhild sinks to the cobbles in front of the cell, folding her legs under her. A moment later, she adjusts, shifting onto a patch of dirt just beside the stone for a softer seat. The chainmail pools around her knees like an odd dress.

“It’s heavy,” Ragnhild murmurs, tugging at it. “I’d never worn armor before I came to this land.”

Anastacia gives an exaggerated tilt of the head, her version of a query. Pantomime is so _crude_ , but it’s the only option she has.

“I traveled from Balder. It is- it was a lovely nation. Not as mountainous as here, but with naught but forests and hills for leagues. And our horses were legendary. Have you-?” Ragnhild trails off, asking a question with her silence.

Nod. Anastacia taps her ear. _I have heard of it._

“Is Lordran your homeland?”

Shake.

Ragnhild’s eyebrows rise. “You’re not of Balder. Are you perhaps from...” What follows is a flurry of names at Anastacia. Names of places and regions. Some she knows, some she does not. She answers in the negative to each, but is fortunate enough that Ragnhild names Astora on her seventh try.

Ragnhild’s face lights up when Anastacia nods. “I see! I traveled to Astora once with my father on business. The capital is a treasure. Were you ever fortunate enough to see the Astoran Guard?”

Head-shake. It takes a moment of thought before Anastacia mimes at herself, then presses her hand flat against the air beside her, like she is patting a child’s head. Then she motions to the cell around her.

“You were… little when you came here?”

A tilting, wavering hand-motion.

“Somewhat?”

Nod. Anastacia rewards Ragnhild with a smile for her patience before flashing her fingers. All of them once, then two. _Twelve_ _._ Just a gangly, stripling child, third daughter of three. With no dowry to her name, she’d been destined for apprenticeship. But her soul had opened itself to the Flame. Or had it been the opposite? And her fate was sealed.

The moment, Ragnhild studying her, lingers slightly too long for comfort,. Anastacia finally points to the other woman and motions questioningly.

“Ah. Well… If you haven’t seen them. The Astoran Guard are elite soldiers, the king’s swords. We got to see them march down the center of the city, all in formation.” Ragnhild’s eyes are far-away, her tone softening into memory. “They were… practical. Not as flashy as some knights I’ve seen, but no troupe of barbarians either.”

The wistfulness tickles something at the back of Anastacia’s mind. She points again, this time at Ragnhild’s sword, following it with a head-tilt.

“Was I a knight?”

Nod.

That earns her a soft laugh. “Oh, no. Recall, I’d never worn armor before I came to Lordran. It is… rather a childish impulse, I know, but this armor was for sale, and I just thought that maybe… Maybe I could try being like a knight?”

Ragnhild pauses, eyeing her again, seeming to search for something, but Anastacia has allowed herself to press against the bars, one dirty cheek pressed to cold iron.

The _carry on_ motion she makes with her hand is sharp and quick with curiosity.

The other woman relaxes. Minutely, a softening around the eyes, in the arch of her neck.

“My family were wealthy. Not terribly so, but enough that, when I was young, I entertained fantasies that if we became rich enough, I could become a knight.” Ragnhild sighs. “I was rather a tomboy at that age, always dreaming of silly, quixotic things. My father used to jest that I gathered more wool than any sheep shearer.”

Anastacia snickers softly. It’s been so long since she has made the noise that it escapes her before she even realizes it is coming.

But Ragnhild smiles, one side of her lips quirking. “I grew out of it. Or… I imagined I had. But here we are… in a far-off land, with none who would know my face, and...” Raghnhild drops her gaze, the words faltering, but Anastacia knows what she wants to say.

A silly, self-serving urge. Something done precisely because it eases the pain and soothes wounds. Some of the hollows in the past have done something similar. But it helps them. Anything to ground, to hold back the gnawing oblivion that threatens all hollows. Ragnhild has done it because it helped.

And there have been days where even Anastacia has played at sword-fighting with the bonfire blade, not a maiden, but a warrior who rescues maidens. Not crippled or weak, but a fighter. Someone who wasn’t alone in a desolate land, far from home.

At least she had chosen to come here. Ragnhild had not.

She nods slowly, solemnly.

XXX

Raghnild talks of other, more pleasant things after that. Her explorations into the burg. The endless swarm of other hollows. A red drake glimpsed in the distance. Knights. True ones at one time, now corrupt sentinels lurking in the dark. One even that Anastacia remembers: A giant of a man in armor that weighed more than the both of them together, toting a club of bone.

Ragnhild does not mention her deaths. Though there is no question there have been many. The flickering emptiness, a bleakness in Ragnhild’s eyes when she trails off, staring at nothing. The twitch of a hand toward the blade at her side. She can taste the scent of another bonfire on the woman. Lesser than hers, echoing imitations of her own pale shadow of the First Flame, but bonfires all the same.

But some of the hollowness has gone out of her gaze when Ragnhild runs out of topics to speak on. She rises, forcing herself not to linger any longer, though Anastacia catches the way the woman’s eyes hesitate, her fingers shaking minutely, constantly.

“There’s a demon. A bull creature up on the battlements. I- I think I’ve a chance at besting him this time.”

Anastacia nods. The motion is not enough. Because she suddenly understands that playing at knighthood isn’t the only selfish decision Ragnhild has made lately. That perhaps this reprieve is all that has staved off hollowment.

It is not _enough_.

Ragnhild turns away once again.

Anastacia bangs her knuckles on the bars. It hurts, but she has no nails to tap with- long since melted away.

The would-be knight turns back.

She crooks a finger at her through the bars. Points up. Not at the burg or parish, but straight up.

To the bonfire.

It takes a thought. An exertion of humanity. Something she’s never done before, not deliberately, but knows now that she must. Not just as firekeeper, but as a human. So that this woman would live another day.

She _kindles_ the flame. The sound of crackling heat comes from above, wood snapping, a sudden plume of smoke rising.

Ragnhild’s eyes are wide beneath her tawny bangs. “Vestal. You-” Her voice hitches. She glances up. Then back. “Thank you. And-” Her fist tightens. “I’m going to return with its head in hand, and then tell you all about the battle.”

A real smile, not the worn, patched one from before, but a ray of blessed sun breaking through clouds.

Ragnhilds turns on her heel, one hand on her sword hilt.

Looks back over her shoulder. Grins.

“My friends call me ‘Rags.’ When I come back, I’ll bring parchment, and you can tell me what yours call you.”

The pure _cheek_ of it is enough to make Anastacia wilt against the bars.

The other woman might be feigning knighthood, but she is certainly an expert at being a scoundrel.

XXX

It’s nearly a week before Ragnhild- _Rags_ reappears. Anastacia is napping, dozing in her cell during a rainy day. Her sleep is fitful, the bonfire above could never be quenched by rain, but that doesn’t mean she enjoys it.

The rush of life cycling through her wakes her. Someone using the bonfire.

There is a moment of waking confusion, then a hope she finds rather shameful. The shame redoubles when familiar footsteps make their way down the cliff to her.

Rags appears. She wears the same armor as before, and Anastacia is about to pronounce her the same overall, when she catches sight of the blade at her waist.

Straight as an arrow, long enough that Rags rests a hand on the hilt to keep it from dragging in the earth.

“From the parish,” Rags says with a smile. She draws the blade a hand’s width from its scabbard. “A sword of Balder. I never imagined I’d see its like here.”

Head-tilt. She’d made it to the parish?

Anastacia motions for more information.

“You’re asking about the sword?”

Head-shake.

“The parish?”

Nod.

“Oh. I’d intended to keep this brief, but…” Rags folds her legs under her and sits before the cell.

She begins with her triumph over the taurus she had mentioned last time. Anastacia has heard its bellows on the air before, and could only speculate as to the size of the beast, but it’s woefully daunting to hear tell of Ragnhild plunging off battlements to stab at it.

The woman has much more to talk of this time. An undead blacksmith, of all things, had set up shop at the bridge to Sen’s Keep. Rags met an… onion man? Oh, no, an onion knight. Anastacia has seen them before. Rags grumbles about the fortress, and Anastacia interrupts to gesture in the direction of the two bells, before miming ringing them.

“The gate opens then?”

Nod in reply. The testing ground of the gods opens only to the worthy.

“What a strange design.”

Anastacia has wondered on what lies within before, but this is the first time she’s ever truly _desired_ to know. To grant foresight to the other woman, some form of aid beyond tending the fire. If nothing else, to ease her deaths.

Rags frowns, lost in thought for a moment before a small smile replaces it. “Have I told you of the other knight I encountered? Sir Solaire of Astora.”

Anastacia gasps. Rags looks at her. They exchange a glance, and then they’re both thrusting arms into the air, Rags on her feet, Anastacia rising to her knees.

“Praise the sun!” Rags yells.

Anastacia mouths the words.

They’ve both begun laughing, though she’s not sure when. She has one grubby hand over her mouth, the other clutching the bars for support, raspy breaths whistling through her fingers.

“I would-” Rags wheezes, words escaping between laughs, “assume you have made his acquaintance before?”

Anastacia responds with a soft smile. The stories she could tell. Solaire had been part of her escort when first coming to Lordran. He’d ridden with her party all the way to the border, and his cheerful words and sunny demeanor had lightened her steps immeasurably.

She had not known he had come to Lordran, but that he is well and hale eases a weight in her breast that she hadn’t realized was there.

It is several moments before their laughter subsides and the conversation returns to its normal flow.

Rags begins to sit, only to stop. “I brought you a gift. A pittance, but mayhap it will make the view-” A shrug toward the vast valley beyond the cell. “A bit more pleasant.”

She fishes in her bag, items within clinking and clacking, before withdrawing an odd set of tubes. The item is maybe as long as her hand, two black leather tubes running parallel, attached with copper bandings.

“Binoculars.” Rags holds them out, and Anastacia, catching the glint of glass, scrubs her palms on her dress before taking them with utmost care. “They’re a looking device. How such a rich tool came to be lost here, I know not.”

Anastacia lifts the looking glasses to her face. Squints. Both eyes at once, but- she tries it, recoiling instantly at the blur of colors that jumps out at her.

Rags chuckles. “Careful now… ah. You...” She winces, brow furrowing. “I was so enamored with those that I forgot to bring ink and paper. My third time darkening your door, and I still act the churl.”

Anastacia motions carefully, waving the words away. She cannot be too airy or dismissive with her gestures, not when she could give offense where none is meant.

After all, firekeepers did not need names. They had their duty, and the first flame did not require such earthly things as names.

She thinks this. She knows this. The truth of it curls around her bones, hotter than blood, smoother than oil.

But she finds herself setting the binoculars aside and bending forward. There is a small patch of soft dirt outside the bars to her cell, not like the hard-packed soil within.

Slowly, dragging a finger through the dirt, Anastacia writes. Ragnhild goes utterly silent as she works, sliding back to allow her more room.

The first word she ever learned to spell at her mother’s knee.

A name that has not been spoken to her for so long that she finds herself doubting the spelling, second-guessing herself.

Rags mouths each letter as it is scratched out. When Anastacia finishes, she sits back, disobedient hands retreating to her lap to seize handfuls of her skirt.

The other woman mouths it once more, then murmurs it aloud. She pronounces it wrong, a hardness on the ‘c’ that is echoed in Rags’ other words, a consequence of a Balderan accent.

Anastacia points to the letter in question, then makes a flowing motion with her hand.

“Oh.” Ragnhild looks up. She’s smiling again. “Anastacia.”

Spoken in Rags’ gentle voice, the word is poetry. An enunciation with the same care and wonder that Anastacia had given the names of gods when she had tongue to pray with. Her heart lurches, humanity trembling her ribs with a sudden surge.

She wishes she had given her name sooner.

The word makes her feel human again.

XXX


	2. Chapter 2

 

The sun rises and falls twice, and a presence enters the firelight.

Anastacia secrets away the binoculars to a spot outside view in her cell, and smooths the worst of the dirt from her dress in preparation. Rags, though not as clamorous as some of the armored folk that have visited the bonfire in the past, still rings and jingles, and the sound of her boots is easy to follow.

She’s so focused on the other woman’s approach that she almost misses the ripple as another presence enters the shrine. If the newcomer makes a sound, she cannot hear it, though they do stop a moment at the fire, circling it with the deliberate motion of someone taking in the sights.

When Rags finally clanks into view, Anastacia is tensed, a carved, ashen statue. The second follows behind the blonde. A man, judging by the height, though he is clad head to toe in elaborate, copper-gold armor. His chestplate is the strangest, his ribs and heart encircled in a pair of sculpted, metal arms. Like his armor was its own lover’s embrace.

“It seems that most of the folk I meet in Lordran are in cells,” Rags says, stepping aside to introduce the man. “I was able to free this one at very least. This is Sir Lautrec of Carim.”

The man bows in return, fist to heart. A formal response that would merit a curtsy, were she able to give one. Instead, she bends at the waist, a sitting bow.

“Your fire will be of great relief after a lengthy imprisonment.” Lautrec’s voice is somehow rough and smooth at the same time, a rustling snakeskin noise. “Would you honor me with your name, maiden?”

She performs the familiar gesture for muteness, adding a small bow of the head as conciliation for her silence.

“Ah, my apologies.” Lautrec’s helmed head turns to Rags.

The other woman blinks, caught off-guard. “Yes?”

“What is her name?”

Rags’ eyes widen. She glances across to Anastacia.

Anastacia looks back. And then surprises herself by shaking her head, ever so slightly.

“Her name is... is just ‘vestal.’”

“It is my pleasure then, vestal,” Lautrec says. “How provident to meet another of faith, especially one as devoted as you. Service to the gods is never easy, and your station as anchorite must be its own trial. Perhaps, if it will not impede your duties, I may return later and speak of beloved Fina with you?”

She nods, then flashes gestures at him. One palm lifted, held towards him, then drawn into towards herself. _Please, come see me._ She spreads both arms, taking in the whole of the area. _You are welcome here._

“That is most gracious of you.” His smile is audible, the cheer odd in his raspy voice. “I look forward to our talks.”

He bows once more, nods to Ragnhild, then departs, padding up the stairs. She can feel him passing through her firelight, though he does not use the bonfire. Instead, he walks onward, leaving the circle of warmth and vanishing from her awareness.

It is only then that the smile leaves her face and she looks back to Rags. The other woman has a similar expression of abashment.

“I- I did not want to tell him either.” There’s a rueful twist to Rags’ mouth. “It felt as though, if you wished to tell him, you would tell him.”

Anastacia smiles softly and nods. The idea of sharing her name again so soon, after so long anonymous… is uncomfortable. An intimacy, a confidence that Lautrec had not earned.

She reaches out and pats the dirt before her cell. Rags sits with an unladylike grunt.

“I suppose you want to hear about my latest misadventures. Well… I don’t know where they captured it or where they got armor for it, but the hollows at the gates of the parish had a war boar, of all things. I was half-tempted to bring it back for you to ride upon, and...”

XXX

Rags is in and out frequently over the next week. A shortcut discovered in the parish allowed the blonde to come and go with immense ease, and her visits become daily. Anastacia, though she can’t tend the fire as frequently as she likes, remembers the days more keenly than any that have passed in a long while.

Time is meaningless to the endless. She kindles, she burns, she quells. The fire is and will be.

But when Rags visits her, the time that had passed by, an unbroken river, a mindless stretch of ritual and routine, becomes alive.

Each time, she brings stories. Little tidbits of her explorations into Lordran. Anastacia, who has made due with her own imagination for years, finds herself rapt as Rags weaves tales of the land beyond the shrine.

The other woman should have been a storyteller.

XXX

On the second day, Rags brings her a tall, ornate helmet. It is too large for either of them to wear, and bears six eyeholes, of all things.

“A sorcerer’s,” she says. “He danced to cast his spells. Would that I had such an ally on my side. He turned the meanest of hollows into a rabid mob.”

Rags’ laugh is rough around the edges, and though she says it like a joke, Anastacia doesn’t think it is.

Tentatively, she pokes a finger at one eyehole. They’re actually lensed, covered over with a strange crystal-glass. Whatever metal the helm is made from is cool to the touch, and oddly slick, as though it has been oiled.

She lifts it, meaning to put it on as a lark, something to lighten the atmosphere, but pauses, staring into the opening. She could smell it, this close. Steel and incense. Ragnhild had almost certainly killed the man wearing it. Putting it on would mean tasting his last, stale breaths, the stink of desperate combat.

She lowers it and sets it aside.

The eyes have weight to them, as though it is watching her.

“Anastacia? Are you well?”

She blinks, and looks up again. Rags is leaning in, her face concerned.

Anastacia smiles, waving away the bad mood that had settled around her. She thinks a moment, and then starts miming to Rags.

It takes some doing, but she manages to goad the other woman into imitating the sorcerer’s war-dance.

Anastacia laughs so hard she nearly vomits humanity.

Ragnhild ends the dance pink-faced and smiling, and immediately tries to rope Anastacia into learning it as best she can.

XXX

The third day is blindingly sunny, the interior of her cave pleasantly cool against the heat, even as the earth outside bakes to a crust. The dour man who hangs about has wandered by in only his shirt-sleeves, and she is fairly certain he’s gone swimming in Frampt’s pool.

But when Rags appears, she is in full armor, face glistening from the window of her chainmail. It is only when Anastacia motions to her hood and mimes lowering it that Ragnhild complies. Her hair is two shades darker, soaked with sweat and plastered to her skull.

She brings a small dagger, the sheath set with jewels. It is a princely gift, and Anastacia tries to refuse it.

Rags pushes it back.

“Just- It is better if you have it. I know you are safe in your cell, but there are many around who would still attempt to prey upon you.” Rags bites her lip. “None do that in my absences, do they?”

She’s wearing gloves, but the quiver in her hands is still noticeable. Rags pushes again, and Anastacia takes the knife. Its weight in her lap is discomforting, a strange, hard presence.

Rags finally, at long last, smiles, but doesn’t launch into stories as she usually does. Instead, the other woman stares out over the valley, eyes far away. She isn’t looking at Anastacia, so there is no way to continue her part of the conversation.

There is silence for long minutes, the two of them sitting and watching. Anastacia has stared down at the valley for so long that it has lost all mystery or novelty, and she finds herself wishing she could see it through the other woman’s eyes.

Clouds begin to pass by, their shadows darkening the forests and mountainsides far away.

Anastacia sits and squirms. There is nothing wrong with a comfortable silence, but this is hardly cozy. Rags isn’t saying something.

She taps the bars. Softly at first, then more insistently.

Rags does not turn. Anastacia finds herself fuming, humanity beginning to turn unhappy corkscrews in the hollow of her throat.

It is not _fair_ of the other woman to deliberately turn her back on her like this.

She’s just beginning to work herself up to full-blown annoyance when Rags turns around.

“I- I apologize. I was adrift in thought.” Her eyes flick down to the dagger in Anastacia’s lap. “Call me paranoiac, but I will rest easier knowing you have at least that.”

She turns back to cloud-watching, though with her head partially turned this time, so as to catch anything Anastacia mimes.

Something has happened.

She gestures quickly at the other woman, trying to find signs to convey wellness and safety. _Are you well? Did you die?_

They are inadequate. Ragnhild looks sideways at her, sighs, then shakes her head.

“It is of no import. Do not worry yourself for my sake.”

A lie. And the other woman is a terrible liar, Anastacia notes. She wears her heart on her sleeve, and in the creases around her eyes, heavy and dark with unspoken words.

Something has happened, and Rags is lying to her about it. This is not the silence of incipient hollowing, or the hush of morning, but the deathly _quiet_ of something too horrible to voice.

Anastacia sits, miserable now. Clouds pass. The sun lowers a bit.

She finally resigns herself to something easier. Duty is always easier, and she _has_ been rude in not playing a better host to her guest today.

There’s a bucket of cool water by her bed. Normally for her to wash face and hands with before bed, but drinkable as well. She lifts a dipper of it and scoot-crawls her way back to the mouth of the cell.

It takes more tapping, and some waving this time, but Rags finally snaps out of her fugue and takes the dipper. She drinks, gasps at the mountain chill, and then empties the container.

“Thank you. That was a balm I needed dearly.” A pause, a tightness leaves her shoulders, and then she smiles. “Shall I tell you about the juggernaut of Berenike that guarded the altar in the parish?”

XXX

The next two days are easier.

Rags appears with the dawn. They share a quiet moment to watch the sunrise, and then the undead woman is off.

She returns at twilight, laden with new goods and more tales. Anastacia sits rapt as Rags regales her with stories of monstrous beasts and corrupt knights. On the fourth day, she returns smelling of char and over-cooked meat, her chainmail blackened, to talk more on the red drake.

Dragons are an area that Anastacia is ambivalent on. They were creatures of the previous age, and their slaying had heralded the way for the age of Man, the lighting of the First Flame. The theology is not kind to them, calling them little more than jumped-up beasts.

But they are creatures of fire. They breathe it. Live it. Their skin repels flame. They fly.

She is… perhaps a little envious of dragons, who seem gifted with every boon she desires.

Rags catches on after the third time Anastacia motions for _more_ during her retelling on the dragon.

“Keen on dragons, are we?” she says, smirking.

Anastacia shrugs, then points at the other woman and gestures in question.

“More on dragons?”

Head-shake.

“Am I keen on dragons as well?”

Anastacia makes a so-so motion with her hand.

It takes a few more rounds of guessing before Rags cottons on that Anastacia is asking her favorite animal, and by then the moment has somewhat passed. The constant yes-and-no is tiring and frustrating, and when it’s over, Anastacia wishes she had just written the question in the dust.

Rags still smiles though, seeming unperturbed. The woman’s patience is saintly.

“Well, my mother was always a great lover of cats. My father kept a boarhound though, and when I was young, I used to ride it around, playing at jousting. I remember, when I was six, he was...”

XXX

The sun falls on the fourth day of Ragnhild’s visits.

Her stories have run the gamut from her favorite animals to plays to swords to gowns to trades. Rags’ voice had grown hoarse, and Anastacia had finally just hauled out her water bucket for the other to sip from.

Sunset finds them pressed close to the bars. Anastacia has her legs folded protectively under her- her feet are as bare and filthy as any farm maid, and the maimed flesh of her ankles is quite indecent – but she is perhaps a little more lax than usual, her posture looser.

“Where was I?” Rags leans into the bars, cushioning her shoulder with her bag. “I think I’ve told you everything of Lordran that I’ve seen so far, and life in Balder was hardly the stuff of bards’ tales.”

The blonde purses her lips, seeming to think. “Why don’t you tell me a story this time?”

Anastacia frowns at her. How was that supposed to work? That Ragnhild had enough confidence in her clumsy flailings to think Anastacia could manage a story was flattering, but it was hardly possible.

“Please?”

She shakes her head at Ragnhild. Points at her, then mimes laughter, exaggerated and sarcastic. _It would only make you laugh at me._

“I would never.” Rags stares at her a moment longer, eyebrows raised, and then she wilts. “Perhaps another time then? Spare it some thought. I would ask you to do nothing I would not do myself.”

Anastacia can do nothing but nod in reply. Maybe if she had paper to write upon… Yes, that might work well. She mimes _writing_ , then the curling-fingers motion she uses for _give me._

“Ah, I forgot again, didn’t it? It will be a hunt for an inkwell that hasn’t gone dry or been smashed by some hollow, but if I can find good paper or parchment, would you settle for charcoal?”

Charcoal? Anastacia has lit so many fires that her bones are probably made of the stuff. She nods.

“In the mean time, I could try my hand at making up a story for you.” Rags grins impishly. “But you don’t get to laugh at me if I don’t at you.”

Anastacia presses a palm to her heart and huffs in affront. _I would never._

“Of course not. Now… this story begins with a… dragon. It- um, was pillaging a far-off village known as...”

Anastacia is so busy giggling at the other woman’s clumsy, though rather spirited tale, complete with imitating the voices of every character, that she doesn’t notice it getting dark.

But Rags does, and she calls a halt to the story.

“It is hardly fair for me to speak to you, when it is too dark for me to see what you say back.”

XXX

On the fifth day, Rags brings a lantern and books, looted from the burg, as well as a cloak to keep the night’s air off Anastacia.

Her village had had seven books, five of which were holy texts in the temple. Rags has retrieved as many in barely a day. The consequence of generations of undead coming to Lordran to hollow, leaving their possessions for the taking.

Anastacia considers briefly using the margins as space to write to Ragnhild in, and dismisses the idea almost as quickly. Of the books that aren’t scriptures, one is a tome on magic, and the other is a scholar’s manuscript. Nothing she is willing to deface when she can just wait.

The cloak is soft and plush, only darned a little, and frankly, too nice to wear round her sooty, ash-caked body. For a woman who has worn her last six dresses until they literally fell apart on her, and only had new garments when someone died nearby, it is a far finer gift than even the books.

Anastacia folds the cloak and puts it aside.

When Rags visits her the next day, Anastacia is freshly scrubbed, her dress beaten as clean as it will come, still drying at the edges. Laundry and cleansing mean limping up to Frampt’s pool, and that can only be done in the dead of night, when there are none who might see her bathing.

She wears the cloak. Rags smiles, and Anastacia finds herself regretting not having a protective coating of ash to hide her blush.

XXX

More stories on the sixth day. Haggling with Andre, the undead blacksmith. A brief foray into a nocturnal garden at the base of his tower, guarded by a headless, stone demon. A flower plucked from a bower there as a gift. Anastacia tucks it behind her ear and continues listening without disrupting Rags’ story.

The things the other woman has seen. It is everything Anastacia has dreamed of, and infinitely more. Rags’ words warm something within her that has nothing to do with fire or humanity, and her presence illuminates the shrine at all times of day.

When they reach the end, there is an unpleasant lull in the conversation as Rags tries to find a new topic, Anastacia shifting on her knees, trying to do the same. It is the same every time they meet. One always reluctant to go, and the other always sad to see her leave.

The silence today is heavier though, Rags chewing her lip, seeming to hold back something unpleasant. She opens her mouth twice, makes to speak, and then bites her tongue again. Rags actually makes to rise when Anastacia gestures.

Two fingers to her lips, then tilting away, her expression plaintive. _Come on. Speak to me._

Rags winces, but sinks back to sitting. “Do you know anything of the lower part of the burg? I found a key to the gate some time ago, and only just remembered I had it today. A merchant I encountered is… knowledgeable on the sewers, and she spoke of a path down to Blighttown from beneath the burg.”

Anastacia rubs her thumbs together as she thinks, burned flesh against scarred, the motion meditative. It’s not a topic that has come up frequently when undead visit her. The sewers are accessible there, and she knows she has heard tell of a way to Blighttown, but such a path would be impossibly circuitous. A fool’s errand when there is a lift in the base of the shrine that goes deep into the valley. Every traveler thus far has simply gone that way.

Wait- Blighttown? Anastacia tilts her head at Rags. _Why?_ She points up at the parish and mimes ringing the bell.

The Balderan woman looks away. Her hands clutch at her elbows, chainmail rustling. “Forgive me, I know it is vitally important to you, but I have had little luck. The bell is too well-guarded.”

Anastacia taps the sorcerer’s helm in question.

“He was nothing.” Ragnhild’s gaze returns to her, and her mouth is twisted sourly. “I am no match for the gargoyles there. Just as I thought to defeat one, another joins the fray, and I die. I die, again and again and _again_.”

Rags voice breaks on the last word and she slumps against the bars. “It seems that for every hurdle I cross, there is another greater beyond it. I defeat the taurus, and a dragon meets me. I triumph over the sorcerer, only to find stone beasts.” She draws a soft, ragged breath. “What new horror awaits me next?”

Anastacia has no words. She wants to reach out, to take Rags’ hand and comfort her, but duty holds her hands in her lap like shackles. Touching her once was a mistake, a thoughtless accident. To do so again, deliberately, cannot happen.

The firekeeper is hearth-tender. Host. But never friend. Growing too close to the undead would inevitably end in despair for the both of them. Meeting with Rags like this has pushed too far already.

And even if she did reach out, what would she do? There is nothing to say. She could touch a hand or stroke Rags’ hair, but they would be only empty gestures. She could not rise from her cell and aid the other woman in her quest. She cannot raise a sword or cast miracles or heal her wounds.

The firekeeper is tied to the flame, and she can no more stray from its light than outrun her own shadow.

She bows her head. Penitent.

Rags is still a long moment before she exhales and pushes away from the bars. “I- I am sorry. I should not trouble you like this. It is not fair to push my problems on you when all you have done is help.”

She turns on her heel and walks away. Not down the stairs to the lift, but up. Through the firelight and off, vanishing into the night.

Anastacia stays, soft and quiet and useless.

XXX

The morn of the seventh day finds Anastacia still awake.

Sleep never came to her, not when the memory of Rags stealing away is still fresh and raw. She had lain awake for hours, and only when the far horizon turned pale yellow, and the sleeping shapes of travelers around her bonfire had stirred, had she uncurled from her cocoon of blankets.

She has just washed and crawled over to the bars when the sound of boots on stone comes to her. Anastacia jerks to attention, ears pricked, eyes wide for a glimpse.

Let it be her.

Boots. Stone.

She knows already. The steps are too heavy, the armor more resonant.

Sir Lautrec steps before her view.

“Vestal, I hope I did not wake you.”

He bows, and she returns the gesture in kind. The forms must be observed, and he is a guest. Even if she wishes now that she had stayed in the dark and dank for a few hours more, and Lautrec had found a better use of his time.

She needs to think.

“May I?” He motions to the earth where Rags normally sits.

Anastacia bends her neck, a stiff, clumsy, jerk of a nod.

“Excellent.” Lautrec sits differently than Rags- leaning back to put more of his weight on his hands. His whole demeanor remains… poised. As though he could leap from his seat at any moment to fight and kill. A tiger at rest.

“I intended to speak of Fina with you, and it only occurred to me as I traveled back to the shrine that she is little known in Lordran.” Lautrec tilts his head in question, and Anastacia shakes hers.

“Foolish of me. In Carim, we have the goddess Fina, patron of beauty and love. Odd that a warrior like I would seek her service, but I’m sure you understand. Service to a greater purpose. My sword in her name.”

The floor of her cell is damp, it rained in the night, and her toes are freezing, digging into the mud. The faint push of keeping herself from sinking any further catches his eye like a beacon, a _snap_ of his head like a falcon sighting a mouse. The motion is regretted instantly.

“Got you listening now, do I? Fina is…” He grasps the air, trying to catch a word on the tip of his tongue. “She is _perfection_. But like all beautiful women, there is no shortage of men seeking to catch her eye. Many knights seek out quests or treasures or glory, trying to prove themselves to her. To make her acknowledge them.” He laughs under his breath, the sound hollow from beneath his helmet. “They misunderstand her. Earning her attention is not hard. She loves all equally. What is difficult is proving _worthy_ of her love.”

Lautrec rises, shoulders loose, hands spread like a performer. “How could a mortal man ever be worthy of perfect, ever-lasting Fina? Do you love the sparks of your fire, that burn out as quickly as they are seen?”

Anastacia nods.

Lautrec pauses. “Do you now?”

She does. Because the flame is eternal. Even if sparks leave it, they are merely rejoining the world in other forms, and will eventually return. There is a beauty in fleeting sparks that light up her evenings and pop against her pocked cheeks on cold mornings. Little flickering lights, easily extinguished by adversity, but under the right conditions, a blaze waiting to occur.

They are no different than hollows.

But Lautrec is staring at her now, one hand rising like he means to tap the chin beneath his helm. “Now that I think on it, you are tied to your fire, are you not? An immortal. Yes… You would understand what I speak of. Tell me, vestal, have you ever loved a mortal man?”

Her fingers twist in her skirt.

“Did you not ache when he passed?”

How many years has it been? When had she last violated the code of the firekeeper? Not toeing the line as she did with Ragnhild, but outright crossing it.

What was her name? It has been so long. A word that she had locked away, never to speak or think, just as she forsook the names of gods.

“Would it not be better if he had been like you?”

What swims to the surface of her memory is not a name, but an image: a face half-cloaked in shadow, suddenly lit up as pyromancy bloomed in cupped hands.

“Not fading away. Never dying.”

More unearths, faster. Something _wrenches_ inside her. A dam is breaking. Rags had only cracked it.

A rasping, husky, lovely laugh; her throat had been scarred by flame early on. She had always smelled like smoke, not the earthy scent of wood smoke, but the sweet musk of incense.

No. No more.

“Never to leave you.”

And she had gone off one day and simply never come back, like a dog slinking off to- to-

Anastacia gasps, hands pressing to her eyes.

“I thought so.” Lautrec’s voice is triumphant.

It’s only when she feels the soot on her cheeks beginning to drip and run that she understands why.

Lautrec moves forward. Not all the way to the bars. But very, very near indeed. She looks at him through her fingers, the weight of his gaze palpable.

“The real path to Fina is not to drag her down to mortal standards, but to become something worthy of her. To live forever is the first step on that path. Not as a feeble, mindless hollow, but _true_ immortality.”

He tugs at the gorget of his armor, drawing a corded necklace forth. A ring hangs from it, the same color as his armor. Lautrec grips it feverishly.

“I will be worthy, firekeeper.”

Anastacia does not move.

He stares at her for a long minute, seeming to wait for her to speak. When she remains still, his shoulders slump as though he’s exerted himself a great deal with his words, and after staring a moment longer, he strides away.

Anastacia stays frozen, a frightened rabbit, until he leaves the circle of her firelight and disappears into the world beyond. Then she sinks down, back scraping the wall until chilly mud soaks into her dress and underclothes.

She does not weep.

XXX

The noonday sun has come and gone by the time she rouses herself.

A new fire has taken root in her.

An understanding.

She must have faith. Rags is different. The way Anastacia feels about her is different.

And if she does not believe, does not support the other woman to the best of her ability, she will regret it until the day she dies. Another failure she has to live with.

She _cannot_ live with another.

To that end, she prepares gifts.

A bracelet made from a lock of her hair, the gray strands braided into a ring. Perhaps a strange gift, but young women gave such to those dear them when they went to war back home, and her hair is potent enough to kindle a bonfire if cast into it.

Two little wood containers of salve. The stuff has the consistency of jelly, the color of midnight, and smells like rot, but Anastacia makes it by grinding the moss that grows in her cave, and it will ease the pain of burns. Something for Rags to use if she encounters any more dragons.

These items are wrapped in a simple kerchief, embroidered on one corner with a small, needlepoint flower. Something Anastacia had made as a girl, brought with her as a little bit of home. A bit dingy after all these years, but nothing a good scrub hadn’t fixed.

A token of a maiden’s favor to a knight.

It is, as her mind keeps telling her, a very forward gift. And definitely inappropriate for a firekeeper to give. But she can’t pretend this was anything but selfishness _._ Not as a firekeeper or as a human, but as a woman.

Lautrec is not wrong. Growing close to an undead is foolish. A lesson learned again and again over the years. There will be pain and loss. Inevitably. But she has learned also that regret cuts deeper than even loss.

So Anastacia sits, hands in her lap, kerchief folded beneath them, and waits for Rags.

And waits.

The sun goes down. Her bonfire glows on the mountainside, a beacon for the entire valley.

Anastacia falls asleep waiting, and wakes with her face in the dirt.

XXX

Two days. Three days. Four.

She does not weep. Such things have burned out of her long ago.

But if such a creature as a firekeeper could hollow, then surely the empty, aching sensation in her chest is what it would feel like.

XXX

A _week_.

Ragnhild’s absence brings with it not emptiness, not welcome solitude, but _guests_.

A few ragged soldiers pass through the shrine. They have the lilting tongues of Zenans, and trade with the surly man before leaving up the hill to the burg. More undead on pilgrimage. They do not so much as notice her before they depart.

One of the forest-dwellers, a solitary huntress, comes and goes, likely searching for worthy recruits. A strange, lumbering figure in brassy armor, face hidden behind a carved, wooden mask, his sword as long as she is tall, follows not long after.

A paladin, bowl-cut, thick as a tree in his heavy armor, takes up residence further into the shrine. He is waiting for companions, he explains, but he has wolfish hunger in his eyes when he surveys her. This, at least, is something she recognizes, understands. He is not the first man to lust after her. Hollows are nothing but baser desires given flesh.

The knight from Carim remains an enigma.

He has lingered for days. Sometimes he vanishes up the hill or down into the graveyard, but always he returns, stalking about like a great cat, eerily silent even in his armor. Perhaps she imagines it, but he seems to appear more frequently now that Rags is gone.

Lautrec watches her. Not subtly or curiously. He sits down in front of her cell, back to the drop, and watches. His naked interest is discomforting, and she keeps to the darkest part of the interior as much as she can when he is around.

It is not the first time a visitor has taken an odd interest in her. But they all eventually grow bored and leave. Petrus almost certainly will when he realizes the extent of her deformity. Lautrec… does not feel that way. He has not attempted to speak to her again. Perhaps he had said all he needed to. But there is something of the act of _waiting_ in his prowling circuits of the shrine.

Anastacia consoles herself during this time with the knowledge that this too will pass. They are transient. A rest at the fire. Perhaps a night spent beside it. But they all leave. Such has always been the way of things. The bonfire is a temporary refuge. A hearth and home in a land bereft of such things.

Petrus will depart. Lautrec would eventually turn his interests elsewhere.

Ragnhild will return.

She tells herself this. Forces herself to believe it.

And so she stokes the fire and creeps back to her cell, to fall asleep another night surrounded by reminders of Rags.

XXX

Ten days.

She folds. There must be some word of Rags. Some glimpse of her, a beast slain, a traveler aided. Anything.

It takes her hours to work up the nerve to signal the dejected man who hangs around the shrine.

He looks at her like she is a widow, his eyes downcast, his voice low.

“Oh dear, dear, dear. You’re waiting for your friend? The lady knight.” He squats down so they are face to face. “Did you not notice, martyr? Or were you so enraptured by all her stories?” He looks her square in the eyes, even his tired smile fading. “Did you not see that she was hollowing?”

Anastacia is only kneeling, but his words knock her flat on her bottom.

No. _No._

She gestures frantically. At the man- his eyes. Then a furious shrug in question. _Did you see?_ A jabbed finger in his direction. _Are you certain?_

The man squints at her. “Slow down, slow down. I can’t understand all your waving.”

Anastacia forces herself to take a deep breath, letting the humanity submerge her lungs a moment before she exhales. She repeats the gestures, more slowly this time.

_You. Saw?_

He grimaces. “She looked like raw meat every time she came to visit. It was only ever for you that she reversed it. Poor fool, wasting humanity like that… I don’t think her journey was going well at all.” The man shakes his head as though Rags is some colossal joke. “No, no. She’s surely hollowed by now. Did- did you truly not notice?”

Anastacia gives him no answer. She turns her back and slinks into the depths of her cave.

It’s only when she lays in the dark, wrapped in the cloak and bedding Rags had given her, and buries her head in her hands, that she knows. The only fool here is her.

How had she missed it?

Failure after failure after failure. Everything would drive another to hollowdom, she had ignored in Rags. The other woman hadn’t run off or met with some terrible fate in the lower burg. She’d slunk away to lose the last dregs of humanity. Just as _she_ had.

Firekeeper? She wasn’t fit to be a town fool.

XXX

She stays in her cell, biting at chapped lips and picking at old burn scars for a week. A solid week in which Lautrec does not reappear, and even Petrus and the other surly lurker make themselves scarce.

Ragnhild has shown neither hide nor hair. The bell hasn’t rung.

The regret begins to hurt a little less.

Time rolls on.

It is the night of the seventh day when Anastacia creeps through the cracks in the mountain. Her duty calls. The bonfire will burn as long as she does, but that does not mean she can rot away in her cell. Purpose is purpose. It must be tended as a garden would, lest it grow wild or wither.

And so she tugs the sword from the stone. The rusted, charred blade crumbles to dust as she lifts it and sets it aside. The flames falter.

When the bonfire has reduced itself to a few smoldering embers, she cleans away the old ash and detritus, sweeping the fire pit clean with a tree branch. The ash she gathers and offers to the sky, letting the wind carry it away from the mountainside.

When the pit is clear, she begins feeding sticks and leaves into the embers. It takes some time before they do more than smolder, but when the first flame ignites, she is there with soft breaths to coax it into more. It spreads slowly. She nurses it with a lock of her hair. More tender breaths.

When it begins to truly burn, she reaches to one side. The sword is there, reforged and become new. Shining steel, a blade like coiled serpents, a hilt wrapped in wire.

The Lord of Cinder’s sword rises. She takes it in both hands. Presses her forehead to the hilt.

Soft prayer, eyes shut, mouthing the only words a firekeeper truly needs.

The blade parts the flame when she stabs it downward, and slides into the stone beneath without pause. The fire flickers spasmodically for a moment, and then _burns_.

The fire becomes a flame, becomes a bonfire.

Anastacia scoots back to sit just on the edge of where the heat becomes uncomfortable. Her dress and hands are freshly-stained with ash once again, and the smoke makes her eyes water.

She sighs, spine loosening, her duty done.

And then someone claps.

Not once or twice, but slow, sardonic laughter, told through applause.

Anastacia turns, eyes wide.

Lautrec, knight of Carim stands at the edge of the darkness. The firelight turns his armor red and orange, and his eyes reflect it back like a jackal’s. He lets his clapping subside, gauntleted hands coming to rest on the hilts at his waist.

“That was quite a performance,” he says. “I’ve never seen the like before.”

Anastacia tries to find her feet, but her dress is twisting around her legs, catching them like netting.

“Please, don’t get up on my account,” Lautrec says, still sounding thoroughly satisfied. He walks toward her slowly, savoring the approach. “I thought for a while that you just kept to your cell like that blacksmith down in Old Londo. Just another hermit.”

Her ankles are crying out, the cut tendons there aching and protesting as she finally gets her feet under her. She rises, trembling, swaying like a fawn.

Lautrec reaches out, and with barely a push, knocks her back over. Anastacia topples, hands scraping as she hits the earth, a hiss of pain escaping her.

“The dour gentleman that lingered here said you were hamstrung. A bird with clipped wings, kept in a cage. Another assumption on my part.” Lautrec gestures at her grimy feet. “Did you know that you leave footprints? Muddy, ashy little prints around the bonfire. I saw them by chance. Fateful, lovely _chance_.”

Her breath is coming in jags, heart painful in her chest, the flow of humanity suddenly cloying and claustrophobic, threatening to split her skin. She wants to scream, wants to run from him, to not just sit there, crippled and helpless, but those things have been cut away, just as he’s going to cut away more of her now.

The tears start, and Lautrec sighs, breath whistling through the slits in his helmet. “Do not mistake me, firekeeper. I take pleasure in this, but not because I do you harm. This is the start of my _true_ journey. For that… I thank you. I will make your passing as painless as I can.”

He draws his swords with smooth, lazy ease. The blades are hooked and curved, sharp as moonlight.

Anastacia gathers breath and tries to scream. The sound is a reedy, quavering whistle, a final embarrassment among the terror. Her tears are cold, even this close to the fire. They taste like salt and ash.

Lautrec lunges.

Steel arcs, cuts the smoke.

The world spins.

Anastacia’s vision whirls. Fire. Night sky. Her body.

Flame.

Her head lands in the bonfire.

There is heat, and then nothing.

 

XXX

XXX

I'm relatively pleased with how this turned out. Surprisingly few rewrites on this one. I got the chapter out, then most of my edits were spent expanding each segment into something better. The middle parts of Rags visiting while she slowly begins to despair at her journey were most of the work. They were originally just a quick montage, with the big reveal being the conversation with the crestfallen man where he reveals that yes, Rags was going hollow and Anastacia just didn't want to notice.  
  
We ended up with a lot more foreshadowing, and this ended up being a more Anastacia character-building chapter than the last, which was more on Rags. The segment where Lautrec comes to speak to her ended up much, much different. Most of his dialogue is unchanged from the first drafts, but got rewritten in context so that he's more... human, and less pure evil. The lines where he starts talking about Mayfly Romances and Anastacia reminisces about her old lover came completely out of nowhere.  
  
I'd originally planned for Anastacia to just not have had that kind of experience in her past, but I feel it makes her more complete as a character, and changes the dynamic between her and Rags from "I think I might be gay" to "I can't love this person because she will eventually die." A much different dynamic there. I feel like some of the firekeeper duty stuff ended up a bit muddled. Part of that was her not having that background in the first chapter.  
  
Did my best to keep the Rags and Anastacia sections from being too repetitive in terms of visiting with gifts and stories, and to focus on them interacting and having a slowly deepening friendship. Anastacia talking Rags into doing the sorcerer dance always gets a laugh from me, and I really Rags' line at the end of the one section where she refuses to keep going because Anastacia can't talk back. Their interactions, and working around Anastacia's muteness, were a lot of fun. I think her being respectful of that muteness says a lot about who Rags is, versus Lautrec, who immediately turns to Rags and expects her to interpret for Anastacia instead of allowing her time to speak in her own way. And it really hammers home that something awful has happened to Rags when she deliberately (and very cruelly), turns her back during the one conversation.  
  
And yes, Rags does have the firekeeper soul from the Undead Parish. She's just forgotten she had it in the hubbub of getting killed repeatedly and losing heart in her quest. She was originally going to return it during the gift-giving sequence, but it was a major enough thing that it took up too much space. Does get a bit fuzzy if we consider the possibility that the firekeeper soul was there because Lautrec slew another firekeeper, but I have him here making the connection that firekeepers are immortal during his conversation with Anastacia. Just assume that his imprisonment was for other reasons, and the firekeeper soul was unrelated.


End file.
